MONZA, Italy — For the final 10 laps of Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix, Monza’s Centrale Grandstand, which has stood overlooking Formula One‘s fastest pit straight for 102 years, erupted in celebration each time Charles Leclerc tore past.
A Ferrari win on home soil had looked unlikely for the majority of the 53-lap race, but as the Tifosi watched the remaining laps count down, they started to believe. From within the cockpit, Leclerc could glimpse the fans rising to their feet and started to sense what it would mean to them if he could keep Oscar Piastri‘s McLaren behind him.
“The last three, four, five laps it was quite difficult to keep the eyes on the track and I was obviously looking a little bit in the grandstand,” he said. “I could see everybody was standing up and that was really nice to see. It’s a very special feeling. I could also see some red smoke at one point, so I knew everybody was super excited, but I also knew that I had to finish the job.
“But yeah, in the last five, six laps, I felt like we had it. The tyres felt good and I could see that Oscar was not that fast to catch me before the end of the race if I was not doing any mistakes.”
Leclerc and Ferrari were gambling on making a single set of tyres last two thirds of the race, and by doing so had taken second place and then the lead from Piastri and his McLaren teammate Lando Norris when the Papaya pair pitted for a second time on Laps 32 and 38, respectively. The McLaren pit wall had hoped Leclerc would either follow the same pit call blindly or, by staying out on a one-stop strategy, suffer a significant drop off in performance that would allow at least Piastri to breeze past in the final laps and retake the lead.
The visible emotions of the top three drivers after the chequered flag told the story of how the race unfolded. Leclerc couldn’t hold back a beaming smile as he stood on the top step of the podium after executing a perfect strategy while the body language of Piastri and Norris was tense and frustrated.
For Norris, this was another missed opportunity. As has been the case at every race in which he has started from pole position, the McLaren driver lost first place by the time he started the second lap. At Monza it happened at Turn 4 as Piastri hit the brakes later than his teammate into the second chicane and muscled Norris out of…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at www.espn.com – RPM…